Are these people certain this is all they can do to crash the dollar & bring the country to it's knees? I mean surely there must be something they've forgotten.

It's like a version of the old Soviet joke:

They pretend to cut spending, and we'll pretend to pay taxes...

screw'em - I feel no obligation to help this government.

Don't worry Mark! I hear Speaker Boehner is set to propose the creation of the 'Department of Identification of Government Waste & Inefficiency', not to be confused with the new 'Czar of Unspent Funds Reallocation'. The department will be staffed with 500 bureaucrats, with annual budget increases of 10% per annum, who will root out unnecessary federal spending with all the gusto you'd expect from your friendly neighborhood mid-level bureaucrat. The Czar on the other hand will work tirelessly to make sure that any expiring temporary programs, unspent funds, & spending reductions in tax code are appropriately re-entered in the Congressional general ledger as cuts in spending.

Even the GOP leaders think you can borrow your way out of debt and spend your way into prosperity.

I agree that we should take a machete to the Federal gov't. Based on the news this week I'd start with the school lunch program. There'd be so much wailing and gnashing of teeth over that it would be smooth sledding from there.

But, we aren't going to be cutting any cabinet depts with Harry Reid in the Majority Leader's seat and the big O in the WH.

So let's not eat our own, let's stick together like the lefties do. It took them 70 years to get us to the point we're at, is it at all reasonable to think it can be undone in 3 months?

All they need to win, all they've ever needed to win, is for us to be divided. And they know it and they seek to divide us at every turn.

holy 3 card monte, batman!

my somewhat successful 15 years on wall street and retired at 40 career taught me one thing and one thing only:

never; and i mean never, trust a middle aged man who tans.

you will get far in life trusting this advice.

No meaningful change will come without commensurate social upheaval. If there are no riots in the streets, you know that nothing of consequence is happening.

The question to be discussed now, based on the joke of a response to the debt crises by the Dems, and the pitiful methods and tactics of the R’s, isn’t how to avoid going broke, it’s what does that truly mean?

There is no chance that we won’t continue to borrow money. The politicians know that throwing money around gives them power. The people, at least a voting majority, like all these programs, and don’t know/don’t care about the fact that we can’t afford where we’re going. So we will keep borrowing money. What then?

For a company that’s going broke, your debt rating goes down as your credibility towards paying it back goes down, at least theoretically. But we’re seen how bond ratings, like all things, are subject to influence peddling and manipulation. Which credit rater is going to be the first to downgrade US debt, and pull the plug from the vary system that’s making their company money? So the debt rating won’t fall.

I think you’ll see the people who actually buy these toxic assets (T-bills) start to realize that they are going to be a bad investment. You get a low rate of return, and very questionably long term ability to pay it back, plus the threat of inflation turning your return to far less that it was planned. So will debt auctions start to not sell things out?
The Treasure Department would then need to crank up the interest rate to make them worth the higher risk. This should snowball up, and people around the world begin to realize that these promissory notes are just that, promises. That’s the long, slow, burn out scenario – the gradual decline of our economy with high interest rates, and continued debt piling.

But worst case, is there a point where like all bubbles, things crash suddenly, where everyone trys to dump what they have before it goes down more? Find some sucker who’ll buy 100 bucks of T-bills for 50/40/20 dollars in something that has value? Unlike the petty economies of the world like Greece or Ireland, whose debt is a rounding error here, there’s no IMF big enough to bail out the USA. So then what?

So in summary, we either have a long, slow decline of high interest rates causing stunted growth, while we continue to pile up debt, at either a slightly slower rate due to interest costs, or possibly even a higher rate due to those same costs if we can’t control our need for free money. Or a sudden collapse of the USA debt structure, and most likely the rest of the word’s economy with it. Not a pretty choice.

But remember – corn, squash, and beans makes for a balanced diet. Get your seeds now.

To richbarnett: That's very funny. Boehner and Trump will slog it out for the newly emerging orange vote. I'll only add that you should never ever trust a middle age man who tans and cries at card tricks.